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The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen

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I have read this book over and over again since I first discovered it in 1966. It is a book that has no shelf life - the situations and lessons learned are never ending.

The book is filled with ironies - an Air Force chaplain with a flying phobia (he arrives for basic training in Texas on the train), one of only two chaplains who are Jewish in the entire class and who mistakes his fellow rabbai for an arayan style nazi.

Cohen's experiences with his classmates is interesting, funny and a bit sad. The latter as he fueds with a puratanical minister who is a challenge, not just to Cohen, but to his classmates as a whole.

Not so surprisingly there is only a small congregation for Chaplain Cohen to minister to at his base in Mississippi. Not only that but he runs up against southern segregation at its ugliest within the local synagoge. After his invitation to preach at the civilian synagoge has been cancelled due to his outspoken support of a black Jewish airman, he finds himself essentially restricted to his base ministry.

Being somewhat surplus to requirements it is decided to send Cohen to Goose Bay, Labrador with an air refueling squadron for a prolonged deployment. He arrives on the aircraft essentially unconsious from the sleeping pills he took during the flight. Here, a new chapter in Cohen's life takes place.

First, contrary to regulations, Cohen has been assigned a roommate by the squadron commander. The roommate is soon found to be a young lieutenant with a drinking problem. We later find out that this lieutenant had been in a KC-97 crash and was left with his own flying phobia and used alcohol as a crutch to get him through each flight.

It is at Goose Bay that Cohen's skills are put to the real test as he ministers to men who are not Jewish, there without wives and girlfriends and as such more than a little oversexed, and who suffer crushing morale hits each time the mail from the US arrives. One airman gets a stack of bills with Love, XXXX on the top bill envelope. Cohen tries to get the mail deliveries stopped due to their devastating impact on morale.

Later in the deployment, during a string of crashes and aborted missions, the squadron commander asks Cohen to fly with one of the crews, one containing his roommate. It is only when Cohen remembers sleeping pills are in his room that he agrees to fly provided he can go to his room for "something". The CO is suspicious until the roommate states that the chaplain needs his cold weather gear. Cohen is unconscious during the whole flight, sleeps through an in-flight emergency and unwittingly provokes a confrontation after the flight with his roommate who admires his courage sleeping through the emergency when the roommate was scared to death. We then come to understand both men better in this encounter. Late we learn the reason that the squadron commander roomed his chaplain with a drunk and this too is amusing and sad.

Cohen's morale picks up when he meets a Jewish woman who for some strange reason likes living at the end of the world. Their relationship stumbles along and is strewn with misunderstandings. His proposal of marriage is rejected and the reason for the rejection is chilling.

Back in Mississippi, Cohen is still faced with a small congregation and challenges to fill his time. Then another in-flight emergency fills him with horror and causes him to question his vocation as a rabbi. Strangely enough this disaster leads Cohen to possibly find happiness with the woman he met in Goose Bay.

In all this is a story of one man's life in the Air Force. We see him learning to live with others outside of his faith and to face moral situations that were never covered in rabbinical school classes. It is a superb book and valuable for everyone regardless of religious faith. This should be on the military's 10 most important book lists regardless of service. It is a book you will want to read again and again.

In this novel set in the 1950s, newly ordained Rabbi David Cohen is given an offer he can't refuse by his Rabbinic Group -- to be an Air Force chaplain. He ends up at Landers Air Force Base in Mississippi. There are so few Jews at the base that he has difficulty assembling ten for a worship service.

The portraits of David and his family, the Chaplain's School, an air base in the still-segregated South, an air refueling wing flying the KC-97, the Strategic Air Command, and a deployment to Goose Bay, Labrador, are unforgettable. The plot allows for some interesting discussion of command, marriage and unfaithfulness, Israel and the Holocaust, and interfaith relations.

The author, Rabbi Herbert Tarr, had been an Air Force chaplain, so he wrote from first-hand knowledge. He wrings a great deal of gentle humor from David's inexperience, his attempts to apply rabbinic knowledge in unexpected situations, the ordinary human frailties and foibles he encounters, and the dilemmas faced by aircrew and young airmen. A twenty-first century reader will enjoy deciding what has changed, and what is enduring, about the Air Force since the novel was published. I served in the Air Force in the 1970s, and as I read the novel I said to myself, "yes, he's been there."

This lighthearted treatment then gives way to Labrador and its stresses, and then to the ghastly collision of a B-47 and a fully-loaded tanker over Landers AFB. Chaplain Cohen must console, heal, and make sense of all the tragedy.

In the end, Chaplain Cohen's "conversion" is to a deeper sense of humanity, a deeper feeling for the mission of the Air Force and the nation, and a stronger conviction that faith gives meaning to a person's -- and a nation's -- life.

During the Air Force's 25th anniversary in 1972, an Air Force Academy Department of English study judged The Coversion of Chaplain Cohen one of the three best novels of the Air Force. Many Air Force novels have been published since then, but this novel would surely remain high on any new list.

-30-

I was looking for almost 4 years for another book by this author, I found it! After that I bought everything else he has written. Having been a Jew in the Air Force Review, I know what he is talking about. I too received salami's and rye breads at mail call. If you want to see how all clergy folks interact, this book is for you. Buy it, read it, enjoy it.

I did not recieve The Conversion of Chaplin Cohin. I sent Amazon an E-mail to that effect. but have recieved no I repeat NO satisfaction. I am pissed.